The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in favor of a former female city council member from Texas who was jailed in an act of political retaliation.
Sylvia Gonzalez and her lawyers are a nonprofit organization Justice Research Institute (IJ) sued Castle Hills Mayor JR Trevino and other officials, alleging they violated her First Amendment rights by conspiring to remove her from her position in retaliation for criticizing the mayor.
The Fifth Circuit dismissed her case, finding that she had not presented the evidence necessary to advance a “retaliatory arrest” claim showing that no one else had been arrested after engaging in similar conduct. She was arrested for allegedly trying to remove documents from a City Council meeting, but she claimed she was unaware she had the documents in the first place, and the charges were ultimately dropped.
The Supreme Court on Thursday overturned the Fifth Circuit’s ruling, finding that Gonzalez’s findings showed that the statute under which she was charged had never been used in her county to prosecute anyone for “attempting to steal a nonbinding or expressive document” were enough to support her claim. The Fifth Circuit ruled against her, saying she needed more evidence than that.
“The Court believed that Ms. Gonzalez needed to provide very specific comparative evidence – identifiable examples of individuals who, like Ms. Gonzalez, ‘mishandled government petitions’ but who were not arrested,” the Supreme Court wrote in an unsigned opinion, adding that “requiring a substantially identical and identifiable comparator goes too far.”
Supreme Court hears case in which grandmother was jailed for criticizing Texas city government
Castle Hills police arrested then-City Councilwoman Sylvia Gonzalez in July 2019 on a rarely used charge of falsifying a public document. (Provided by the Institute for Judicial Research)
Gonzalez’s story began in 2019, when residents complained that Mayor Ryan LaPerry was unresponsive to their concerns, particularly about the condition of streets.
Soon after he was elected, Gonzalez led a non-binding petition calling for the mayor to be replaced with the previous mayor, who residents felt had done a better job. Another resident presented the petition at Gonzalez’s first City Council meeting. According to court records, the discussion about the mayor’s job performance “became contentious,” and the meeting was extended until the next day.
At the end of the meeting, Gonzalez said he organized the papers scattered across the podium and put them in a binder before speaking to constituents.
According to court documents, an officer interrupted the conversation to say Trevino wanted to speak with Gonzalez. Gonzalez returned to the podium, where Trevino asked where the petition was. Gonzalez replied that he did not know. Trevino then allegedly asked to see inside Gonzalez’s binder, saying he could see paperclips inside.
Sure enough, the petition was in a binder, so Gonzalez handed it in without a second thought. But two months later, she learned from a neighbor that there was a warrant out for her arrest.
“I didn’t even know what I was being accused of,” Gonzalez, 72, told Fox News. “I’d never been in prison before, and it was very scary for an old woman like me.”
Mothers sue state over ‘creepy’ baby blood database and privacy concerns
“I’d never been to prison … and it was very scary for an old woman like me,” Sylvia Gonzalez told Fox News Digital. (Provided by the Institute for Judicial Research)
According to the lawsuit, Trevino and Police Chief John Siemens used the temporarily transferred petition to launch a criminal investigation into Gonzalez. Three weeks after the investigation began, the police chief appointed a “trusted friend and local attorney” as a “special detective,” according to Gonzalez’s lawsuit.
Special detectives filed an arrest affidavit alleging that Gonzalez was “openly hostile” from his first meeting with the mayor and “desperate to get the mayor fired.” The affidavit also accuses Gonzalez of misleading the woman by “making numerous false statements” about LaPerry in order to get her signature, according to court documents.
Detectives found probable cause to believe that Gonzalez had stolen his petition by placing it in a binder with other documents. Texas Ban The defendants are charged with willfully deleting or destroying government records, according to court documents.
Ranchers claim state flooded their land, killing their animals; Supreme Court to decide whether Texas must pay damages
Sprinklers water the lawn in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on April 29, 2024. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
The statute is often used in cases involving false Social Security numbers, forged official checks and counterfeit green cards, said Anya Bidwell, senior counsel at the Institute for Justice. The Institute looked at 10 years of data from Bexar County and found nothing “even remotely similar” to Gonzalez’s case, she added.
The lawsuit alleges that the special detectives took the unusual step of seeking arrest warrants instead of citations for nonviolent misdemeanors. The special detectives also bypassed the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office and went directly to a district court judge.
“They wanted to punish me, they wanted to make sure I went to prison, and they did a good job,” Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez turned herself in, was handcuffed, spent the whole day in jail, and her mugshot was shown on the evening news. The District Attorney’s Office dropped the charges, but her brief political career was over.
Gonzalez filed a lawsuit in 2020 against Trevino, Siemens, Special Detective Alexander Wright and the city, alleging that he was deprived of his First and 14th Amendment rights. United States Constitution.
Click here to get the FOX News app
“Today is a great day for Sylvia Gonzalez, who has courageously stood up for her First Amendment and against retaliatory actions by government authorities,” Bidwell said.
“The Supreme Court’s amendment to the First Amendment’s retaliation doctrine will ensure Americans can seek justice when there is evidence of a retaliatory arrest,” Bidwell said. “Retaliatory arrests undermine the very foundations of our democracy, and this decision helps protect Americans’ right to speak out without fear of retaliation.”
